Here is the comprehensive list of things to remember as you mull over your profound obligation to your child.
1. You alone are responsible for your child's education. Not all the teachers who will encounter your child. Not the school district. Not Bev Hall. YOU.
2. You do not delegate this job to municipal employees working for the Atlanta Public School system. You collaborate with them but maintain your proper role as overseer of the project. You make changes and corrections as necessary, and you never forget who's in charge--you.
3. You do not have to feel guilty about having more resources than other parents, or demanding stuff for your kids that kids at other schools don't get. The Atlanta Public Schools spend more than $13,000 per year on each pupil. They waste a ton of that money on every kind of misguided management decision imaginable. There is enough money here for a good solid education. What's missing is the will, and the competency, and the culture of success. Or to put it another way: We just need to try harder.
4. You should always be polite with any APS employee with whom you have dealings. You should also always be firm, always follow up, and set the tone early on that you are the dog, not the tail, and you will not be wagged by anyone at APS. (You will see my tired old cliche about the dog and the tail over and over again on this blog).
5. Never allow APS to unilaterally break or "float" any deadline to which it has previously agreed. If you don't know what that leads to, just try parking over at DHUMP next time you need to pick up your kid. Insist on real-world standards of accountability with whomever you deal with, such as prompt email follow-ups and returned phone calls.
6. Understand that while SPARK is an oasis in the middle of the desert that is APS, it is still surrounded by all that desert, and operates in the midst of an overarching APS workplace culture that believes okay is good, good is great, and great is just not achievable. (The parent culture in the Springdale Park PTO, I would contend, believes okay is terrible, good is the absolute minimum, and great is definitely within our reach).
The best thing we can do for SPARK is to never compare it--or let its staff compare it--to anything else APS is doing. Let's keep it an oasis.
7. "Nine years of steady progress," the APS's mantra, is not the same as excellence. APS was in horrible shape when Bev Hall took over. Now it's only below average. Do you understand what that means? When you enroll your kid in a below-average public school system, you have to FIGHT to get your kid the education they need. Do NOT be satisfied with what APS ladles out to you. Do NOT be complacent because your school seems so much better than other schools. Trust me, there are thousands of public elementary schools elsewhere in this country performing at a higher level than SPARK. Our principal is overworked and has no assistant principal to help administer the school. That's an outrage. Our resource teacher, Ms. Williams, is mathematically incapable of fulfilling all the duties she has been assigned. We have no handicap access to parts of the building. The parking situation is atrocious. We have no front door security nor attendant. The buses leave school in the afternoon whenever they leave. These aren't trivial things, because if you want excellence, you have to have it across the board, not just here and there.
8. Only the parents in a school community should define what "excellent" means, and they must get the buy-in of the teachers and staff. That's the way it should work, not the other way around.
Okay. I've gotten you started. Now add some of your own!
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Bev Hall's clay feet
Bev Hall has won a lot of awards and a lot of recognition, and she did take a school district that was as bad as a big metro district can be and, in nine years, bring it up to the level of so-so. Don't laugh, that's a big accomplishment. But don't get too excited, either, because your kid is going to school in a district that, at very best, is so-so.
And you probably hoped for better.
This is one of my pet peeves, so digress for just a moment. Being much, much better than you were nine years ago is not the same thing as being great. APS is not great. It's not even very good.
And yet when you start whining about some small item such as, for example, the district's addiction to breaking every possible corner of the IDEA law when it comes to IEPs, here's what you hear--it's like a mantra, a chant:
"But we have come SUCH a long way--nine years of continuous upward progress!"
Well, it may sound ungracious but I don't care how you are now relative to what a radioactive mess you were during the Bill Campbell administration. I only care how you are now relative to what I need you to be for my kid.
Anyway, let me get back to Bev Hall. My first problem with her is that she's a bureaucrat with a capital B. Evidence: during the selection process for our new principal at Springdale Park, she placed the interests of the bureaucracy and--yes, all of the job applicants-- ahead of the interests of the parents. That's exactly backwards. If any of you want to see my dissection of that process and its many flaws, I'll be happy to share those documents with you.
(Luckily for us, we got a great principal despite the process. But it should have happened because we participated in the actual decision, not just as sworn-to-secrecy "consultants" with no voting power).
My second problem with her--and this is a big one--is that when confronted with substantial evidence of test-score cheating by APS teachers, her first instinct was to protect the accused, not to move quickly to protect the parents and the kids who were the victims of this increasingly common crime.
Even Gov. Perdue called Hall's stance "outrageous," saying "any reasonable person" could see cheating had occurred. This criticism would have had more bite to it were Perdue not a bible-thumping, beer-hating moron himself.
Hall has now moved to correct this egregious lapse of judgment, but it comes too late for me. Her first obligation as superintendent is not to protect her felonious employees. It's to protect children and reassure parents. The appropriate response would have been to condemn the cheating immediately, promise due process to those accused of it, but acknowledge the overwhelming evidence rather than dispute it.
Instead, she reacted like it was just impossible anyone working for her could be a crook.
What hubris. There are all sorts of deadbeats and cheats still working for APS. Two of them have worked on our son's IEP.
If Bev Hall really wanted to know whose fingerprints were on those altered Deerwood tests, she would have found out.
Congratulations, Bev, on 9 years of progress. I hope you're around for many more. I want you to work harder on rooting out the bad people in APS. But I understand the system is weighted against you.
And you probably hoped for better.
This is one of my pet peeves, so digress for just a moment. Being much, much better than you were nine years ago is not the same thing as being great. APS is not great. It's not even very good.
And yet when you start whining about some small item such as, for example, the district's addiction to breaking every possible corner of the IDEA law when it comes to IEPs, here's what you hear--it's like a mantra, a chant:
"But we have come SUCH a long way--nine years of continuous upward progress!"
Well, it may sound ungracious but I don't care how you are now relative to what a radioactive mess you were during the Bill Campbell administration. I only care how you are now relative to what I need you to be for my kid.
Anyway, let me get back to Bev Hall. My first problem with her is that she's a bureaucrat with a capital B. Evidence: during the selection process for our new principal at Springdale Park, she placed the interests of the bureaucracy and--yes, all of the job applicants-- ahead of the interests of the parents. That's exactly backwards. If any of you want to see my dissection of that process and its many flaws, I'll be happy to share those documents with you.
(Luckily for us, we got a great principal despite the process. But it should have happened because we participated in the actual decision, not just as sworn-to-secrecy "consultants" with no voting power).
My second problem with her--and this is a big one--is that when confronted with substantial evidence of test-score cheating by APS teachers, her first instinct was to protect the accused, not to move quickly to protect the parents and the kids who were the victims of this increasingly common crime.
Even Gov. Perdue called Hall's stance "outrageous," saying "any reasonable person" could see cheating had occurred. This criticism would have had more bite to it were Perdue not a bible-thumping, beer-hating moron himself.
Hall has now moved to correct this egregious lapse of judgment, but it comes too late for me. Her first obligation as superintendent is not to protect her felonious employees. It's to protect children and reassure parents. The appropriate response would have been to condemn the cheating immediately, promise due process to those accused of it, but acknowledge the overwhelming evidence rather than dispute it.
Instead, she reacted like it was just impossible anyone working for her could be a crook.
What hubris. There are all sorts of deadbeats and cheats still working for APS. Two of them have worked on our son's IEP.
If Bev Hall really wanted to know whose fingerprints were on those altered Deerwood tests, she would have found out.
Congratulations, Bev, on 9 years of progress. I hope you're around for many more. I want you to work harder on rooting out the bad people in APS. But I understand the system is weighted against you.
It's possible to complain without being a racist. So do it.
I've written several times about the tricky issue of being a relatively affluent white homeowner-taxpayer with children in Atlanta public schools. It's tricky because Atlanta schools basically suck, and the Atlanta Public School system, despite the efforts of the above-average but certainly not superhuman Bev Hall, is overpopulated with administrators who are just not very good at what they do.
But if you complain about the poor statistical performance of the district, or the inability of administrators to compose a sentence in clear English, then you're just racist, and that's all there is to it.
But it's not really a race-based problem. It's such a simple economics problem, really, that the only way race could sneak into and subsequently come to dominate the conversation is if the accusers were poorly educated and unsophisticated citizens; products of, for example, a low-performing municipal school system.
It's a perfect feedback loop. Kids go into the execrable Georgia public schools and emerge poorly educated and with a deeply unrealistic idea of the kind of effort and performance required to be successful in the larger world. Those kids eventually trickle up into every part of our public bureaucracy, from the DMV to the school system. The schools never get better, and the next generation of kids graduates no better-equipped than their predecessors.
The reason it's an economics problem is because (a) Atlanta public schools, although they pay better than suburban schools, carry with them large disincentives to talented teachers, such as poor parent participation, lax disciplinary standards, etc; (b) teacher unions and municipal job contracts protect weak and incompetent employees who would be flushed out in the private sector; and (c) even if we could solve (a) and (b) with the application of more money, which we can't, there is no possibility of further City of Atlanta property tax increases in the near term to fund school initiatives, nor is the Georgia Legislature likely to shift that burden to other taxes.
(You could argue, as I would, that no more money should be necessary on top of the $13,150 per year per student we're already spending (more than $4k above the state average), but it's a moot issue because no more money is coming, period).
But it becomes a race problem because the majority of the people complaining are white and the majority of the people hearing the complaints are black.
I can take it if it's the DMV. I can take it if it's somebody in Watershed Management. (And it is, by the way). But this is my kid we're talking about, so no, I'm not going to just go with the flow.
But if you complain about the poor statistical performance of the district, or the inability of administrators to compose a sentence in clear English, then you're just racist, and that's all there is to it.
But it's not really a race-based problem. It's such a simple economics problem, really, that the only way race could sneak into and subsequently come to dominate the conversation is if the accusers were poorly educated and unsophisticated citizens; products of, for example, a low-performing municipal school system.
It's a perfect feedback loop. Kids go into the execrable Georgia public schools and emerge poorly educated and with a deeply unrealistic idea of the kind of effort and performance required to be successful in the larger world. Those kids eventually trickle up into every part of our public bureaucracy, from the DMV to the school system. The schools never get better, and the next generation of kids graduates no better-equipped than their predecessors.
The reason it's an economics problem is because (a) Atlanta public schools, although they pay better than suburban schools, carry with them large disincentives to talented teachers, such as poor parent participation, lax disciplinary standards, etc; (b) teacher unions and municipal job contracts protect weak and incompetent employees who would be flushed out in the private sector; and (c) even if we could solve (a) and (b) with the application of more money, which we can't, there is no possibility of further City of Atlanta property tax increases in the near term to fund school initiatives, nor is the Georgia Legislature likely to shift that burden to other taxes.
(You could argue, as I would, that no more money should be necessary on top of the $13,150 per year per student we're already spending (more than $4k above the state average), but it's a moot issue because no more money is coming, period).
But it becomes a race problem because the majority of the people complaining are white and the majority of the people hearing the complaints are black.
I can take it if it's the DMV. I can take it if it's somebody in Watershed Management. (And it is, by the way). But this is my kid we're talking about, so no, I'm not going to just go with the flow.
Inertia (And Why You People Piss Me Off)
You're looking at this beautiful new school with the driven, articulate principal (Ms. Brown probably wouldn't infer it from the things I say about SPARK on this blog, but I'm a fan) and the hand-picked teachers, all of whom seem to be really on the ball, and you're thinking, wow, we really got lucky, it could have been so much worse.
And you declare yourself satisfied and pack your kids off to school each day confident things are just peachy, and in doing so you do them a big disservice.
Because you are not pushing hard enough. YOU.
Here's why you don't push.
1. You're busy. You have to make a living, after all.
2. You'd feel guilty demanding more, because already you seem to have so much more than many Atlantans.
3. You don't want to offend the teachers and administrators at SPARK, and you are afraid of being seen as classist (or, worse, racist) if you even raise the idea that things at SPARK could be better.
Well, stop whining and start doing your job, because your job is to secure for your children the best possible education, not worry about what anybody else is getting, or what some teacher or administrator might think of you. Your job is to get in there and, in this order:
1. Figure out the upper limit of what's possible, given our resources and parent community.
2. Insist on setting the bar at that height--the limit of what's possible.
3. Vigilantly monitor progress in all areas, and fulfill your proper role as taxpaying steward of the public schools when the public school bureaucracy falls short.
4. Ask nicely whenever possible, but be demanding whenever necessary.
Admit it. Most of you who are reading this are thrilled to have SPARK as it is. You have let yourselves be persuaded that it's truly an excellent public elementary school, and you go to GREAT pains to make sure you don't come across as infringing on the turf of the teachers or admins.
But it's not their turf. It's your turf. It's your child we're talking about, not theirs.
Be polite, by all means. Be solicitous and kind. But remember that you are the dog and they are the tail, not the other way around, and don't let yourself get wagged.
And you declare yourself satisfied and pack your kids off to school each day confident things are just peachy, and in doing so you do them a big disservice.
Because you are not pushing hard enough. YOU.
Here's why you don't push.
1. You're busy. You have to make a living, after all.
2. You'd feel guilty demanding more, because already you seem to have so much more than many Atlantans.
3. You don't want to offend the teachers and administrators at SPARK, and you are afraid of being seen as classist (or, worse, racist) if you even raise the idea that things at SPARK could be better.
Well, stop whining and start doing your job, because your job is to secure for your children the best possible education, not worry about what anybody else is getting, or what some teacher or administrator might think of you. Your job is to get in there and, in this order:
1. Figure out the upper limit of what's possible, given our resources and parent community.
2. Insist on setting the bar at that height--the limit of what's possible.
3. Vigilantly monitor progress in all areas, and fulfill your proper role as taxpaying steward of the public schools when the public school bureaucracy falls short.
4. Ask nicely whenever possible, but be demanding whenever necessary.
Admit it. Most of you who are reading this are thrilled to have SPARK as it is. You have let yourselves be persuaded that it's truly an excellent public elementary school, and you go to GREAT pains to make sure you don't come across as infringing on the turf of the teachers or admins.
But it's not their turf. It's your turf. It's your child we're talking about, not theirs.
Be polite, by all means. Be solicitous and kind. But remember that you are the dog and they are the tail, not the other way around, and don't let yourself get wagged.
No, we're gonna use MY dictionary, thank you.
We all want excellence from our gorgeous new school but who gets to define what that is, and how will we know when we get there?
Don't fall into the trap of thinking this school has already met the bar we parents wish to set for it. It hasn't. I like to think of it as a school that has the potential for excellence, but we're not there yet.
You know what the biggest obstacle for us is, on our way to excellence? Ourselves. Our own complacency.
That's because we have already persuaded ourselves that excellence has been achieved, or is a foregone conclusion. Just listen to some of the internal rationalizing that's going on:
"Well, we're just feeding off of Morningside's already-established excellence, and besides, we have this beautiful building and it has--gasp!--actual geothermal wells! And it's LEED-eligible! (sound of hyperventilating).
You know what? A green school is not going to get your kid into Georgia Tech.
"We have an awesome principal, and the teachers are great."
(True. But --this is the crucial thing to remember: excellent by APS standards is not how we should define excellence).
And this is where we're going to hurt some feelings.
Saying SPARK is excellent by APS standards is exactly like saying a McDonald's hamburger is excellent by fast-food standards, or the winner of a county beauty pageant in eastern Iowa (I actually dated one such girl in college; her title (and I swear I am not making this up) was "Pork Queen") is pretty-- by rural agricultural Midwestern standards.
It's damning with faint praise. It's factually correct, perhaps, but meaningless, because the standard cited is not the standard we, as parents, would choose to use.
We should set the standard for SPARK based on the standards we have set for ourselves as (let's not feel guilty about it) relatively high-achieving, relatively affluent Americans.
I go to the parent events and I see almost all of you are college-educated, hard-working responsible people. I have yet to meet one of you whose success in life, to this point, was due to any other factors other than hard work, persistence and setting a high bar for yourselves. That's why your level of inertia when it comes to agitating for excellence bothers me so much (see more about that in the post called "Inertia, And Why You People Piss Me Off."
We do not have to apologize for having a different definition of excellence from Bev Hall's definition, or even Yolonda Brown's definition. Yolonda Brown may think she's successful if she hits a certain test score mark, schoolwide. I would not think that was an indicator of excellence. I would expect that from her as a minimum; a floor-level achievement, not a ceiling.
We cannot let anybody but ourselves decide what excellence is, and we sure as hell can't let anybody tell us that SPARK is excellent "compared to APS and Georgia public elementary schools." Please, let's agree on one thing upfront: you can be pretty awful and still compare favorably to most APS and Georgia public schools.
Don't fall into the trap of thinking this school has already met the bar we parents wish to set for it. It hasn't. I like to think of it as a school that has the potential for excellence, but we're not there yet.
You know what the biggest obstacle for us is, on our way to excellence? Ourselves. Our own complacency.
That's because we have already persuaded ourselves that excellence has been achieved, or is a foregone conclusion. Just listen to some of the internal rationalizing that's going on:
"Well, we're just feeding off of Morningside's already-established excellence, and besides, we have this beautiful building and it has--gasp!--actual geothermal wells! And it's LEED-eligible! (sound of hyperventilating).
You know what? A green school is not going to get your kid into Georgia Tech.
"We have an awesome principal, and the teachers are great."
(True. But --this is the crucial thing to remember: excellent by APS standards is not how we should define excellence).
And this is where we're going to hurt some feelings.
Saying SPARK is excellent by APS standards is exactly like saying a McDonald's hamburger is excellent by fast-food standards, or the winner of a county beauty pageant in eastern Iowa (I actually dated one such girl in college; her title (and I swear I am not making this up) was "Pork Queen") is pretty-- by rural agricultural Midwestern standards.
It's damning with faint praise. It's factually correct, perhaps, but meaningless, because the standard cited is not the standard we, as parents, would choose to use.
We should set the standard for SPARK based on the standards we have set for ourselves as (let's not feel guilty about it) relatively high-achieving, relatively affluent Americans.
I go to the parent events and I see almost all of you are college-educated, hard-working responsible people. I have yet to meet one of you whose success in life, to this point, was due to any other factors other than hard work, persistence and setting a high bar for yourselves. That's why your level of inertia when it comes to agitating for excellence bothers me so much (see more about that in the post called "Inertia, And Why You People Piss Me Off."
We do not have to apologize for having a different definition of excellence from Bev Hall's definition, or even Yolonda Brown's definition. Yolonda Brown may think she's successful if she hits a certain test score mark, schoolwide. I would not think that was an indicator of excellence. I would expect that from her as a minimum; a floor-level achievement, not a ceiling.
We cannot let anybody but ourselves decide what excellence is, and we sure as hell can't let anybody tell us that SPARK is excellent "compared to APS and Georgia public elementary schools." Please, let's agree on one thing upfront: you can be pretty awful and still compare favorably to most APS and Georgia public schools.
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